My mother tells me of the beets she dug up
In Germany. They were endless, redder
Then roses gone bad in an early frost,
Redder than a grown man’s kidney or heart.

The first beet she remembers,
She was alone in the field, alone
Without her father or mother near,
No sister even. They were all dead,
Left behind in Lvov. The ground was wet
And cold, but not soft, never soft.

She ate the raw beet, even though
She knew they would beat her.

She says, sometimes she pretended
She was deaf, stupid, crippled,
Or diseased with Typhus or cholera,
Even with what the children called
The French disease, anything to avoid

The slap, the whip across her back
The leather fist in her face above her eye.
If she could’ve given them her breasts
To suck, her womb to penetrate
She would have, just so they would not
Hurt her the way they hurt her sister
And her mother and the baby.

She wonders what was her reward
Fir living in such a world? It was not love
Or money. She can’t even remember
What happened to the deutsche marks
The American sergeant left that day
In the spring when the war ended.

She wonders if God will remember
Her labors. She wonders if there is a God.